


Sweetheart

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Low-key D/s, M/M, Multi, Pampering, Threesome - F/M/M, Triad - Freeform, Trine - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 03:05:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4247040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I think this may be my first official threesome in this fandom. I won't swear it, but I can't recall another I've written. </p><p>This is pure sweetness, in which Greg and Anthea take all the work and worry out of love for Mycroft, at least for an eveninng, and in which Mycroft allows himself to be their simple, shy sweetheart: the beloved rather than the lover.</p><p>I hope it's fun. I'm not even going to try to determine if it's entirely in character. If it is, it's a case of the players being in character as they decisively slip out of character by intent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweetheart

Mycroft Holmes had left work early.

It was unheard of. It was bizarre. It was frightening.

It was wonderful. His skin rose up in goosebumps as the chauffeured Jaguar slipped silent through the London streets toward home. He was going home, where he would…

He shivered.

He’d do what he’d been told.

The thought was enough to nearly turn him inside out with excitement, uncertainty, embarrassment, thrill. It wasn’t even as though he didn’t know what he’d be doing, or who he’d be doing it with. It wasn’t that it would be degrading or painful…or only tiny bits he knew he’d enjoy. He wouldn’t be going home to obediently submit to strangers, or people he didn’t trust. He was going home to do what Greg and Anthea had asked him to, and that made all the difference.

He licked his lips nervously, eyes damp, hands clutched together in his lap. He tried hard to pretend he didn’t know how much this excited him, frightened him, entranced him. He tried to pretend giving the choice and the control over to the two people he most truly trusted in his life wasn’t reducing him to a gibbering wreck before they even started. But there it was…

When the car pulled up outside his Pall Mall building he slipped quietly out of the car with a thank you to his driver. Then he went in, greeting the doorman, and slipped into the lift, going up to the flat three stories up. His flat, with the silent, well-appointed rooms, the bright kitchen looking out on the deep, comfortable back balcony. As he stepped into that space, so safe and so familiar, he closed his eyes, smelling the lemon polish, listening to the soft rumble of traffic outside. Then, opening them again, he proceeded to do as he’d been told.

He went down to the master bedroom and carefully undressed, hanging his suit, putting his shirt and underthings in the hamper. He went to the master bathroom with the vast tub—already full with steaming water, scented with lavender. He turned on the music already queued on the player, lit the candle, turned out the overhead, and slipped into the water, sighing as he sank into the heat. He settled his head gently on the neck brace provided, and drifted, almost afloat in the gallons of steaming bath water.

He touched himself—lightly. Gently. Not too overtly. His fingers slid over his chest, his nipples, his groin, tracing delicate spirals, but never lingering, never gripping. Instead he found the body wash, and carefully washed himself.

“As though you’re preparing to be seen by someone you love,” Anthea had said, softly, as he prepared to leave the office. She’d smiled, eyes making the silent comment that of course he’d be preparing to be seen by lovers—by people who loved him.

He’d shivered then. He shivered now.

The things he was learning about himself…God. Things he hadn’t known before.

“Don’t worry,” Greg had told him days before. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. I don’t want you to do anything that doesn’t excite you. But I think you’re missing what you find exciting because you never let yourself think of it in the first place.” Then he’d pulled Mycroft into his lap, and whispered questions in the dark night, lips dropping kisses between questions.

“Would you like?”

Would he like to be cradled like this more often?

God, yes.

Would he like to let go—of the suits, and the command persona, and all the shyness and fears, and the need to protect and defend and cherish? Turn it around?

He didn’t even know how to imagine what that might be like, until Greg had started those quiet whispers.

Home—to go home early, with no labor waiting. To bathe and dress in comfortable, soft clothing. To go to the kitchen and find it already prepared with good food and drink. To prepare a simple meal using the prettiest, happiest china and table dressings he owned. To listen to music, drink wine, and wait, patiently, for a lover.

For two lovers?

For Greg? For Anthea?

The idea had shocked him. Startled him, certainly. Unsettled him. He was a gay man, and he’d worked with Anthea for years with no fear he’d want to seduce her—or concern that she wanted to seduce him. And, yet, the idea of her and Greg, together taking the reins from his hands, together cherishing him.

He’d been hard on and off since Greg had first suggested it, imagining a million possibilities. A million soft rainbow fantasies had invaded his brain.

“No,” Greg had growled when Mycroft had first gasped and panicked. “No work. No stress. Mycroft, you don’t get it. How would you like to be our sweetheart? How would you like to be our darling?”

The idea had shattered everything he’d expected would be required of him by love.

He washed his hair, then stood and drained the tub, toweling himself off on thick, fluffy terry warm from the towel bar. He powdered himself, brushed his teeth, shaved. Put on a light aftershave. Then he went to the master bedroom and found the clothes laid out for him: comfortable, loose-fitting boxers. Similarly loose, well-broken in cotton drawstring pants that flowed over his bum and thighs like the bathwater had. A supple silk shirt, heavy, warm, cool, smooth to his touch in spite of slubbing that gave it texture. A pair of kick-on sandals fit for a vacation. When he reached the bottom of the pile of clothes he read the note they’d left him.

“Stretch, love. Relax. Go get dinner ready. Have a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Wait for us.”

He traced the letters with his fingers.

So simple, he thought. So little work. Ordinarily for even a modest favor to either, he’d have spent hours planning—deciding what they would enjoy, making reservations for restaurants, obtaining tickets to shows, choosing gifts to mark an occasion…worrying about his suits, about the car to take.

He padded softly out to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, happy to find it filled with choices: fruits. Previously made casseroles and _al forno_ recipes. Cheeses and pates. In the breadbox were loaves of good bread. He smiled, considering the choices. Then he went rummaging in his china cupboard, finding things he hadn’t even known he’d owned.

Perhaps, he thought, he hadn’t owned them. Perhaps like the good food and the clothing and the brimming tub, Anthea and Greg had marshalled their own resources to ensure every luxury was there for him.

He found a silly, sweet, sentimental set of china—white trimmed with hazy summer-sky blue, and over that lush summer flowers from a garden. Irises, lilac, roses, daisies… The set screamed of lazy afternoons and summer teas in the back garden. He laid them out, adding a set of flatware with white handles that might have been bone, or ivory, or china, or mere resin. He put out fat tumblers and made a pitcher of sangria. He put out bowls of fruit, and plates of cheese, and bread and crackers and pate and sausages.

He smiled, and poured himself a glass of the wine, and went out on the balcony to watch the sun set.

He heard them when they came in, and turned, flustered, hurrying to greet them—only to be waved back by Greg as he ambled into the flat. The man’s smile was brighter than the sun had been, and as easeful. Anthea stood beside him, no longer in her trim, professional office gear, but in a silky pants set that fluttered around her supple frame. Greg was in jeans and an open-necked button-down shirt. They bustled around inside, darting in and out of the rooms.

Mycroft watched them, biting his lip and trying not to disobey. They’d told him—don’t worry. Don’t be the host. This is our gig. We can manage it, you know.

Of course they could manage it, he thought, worried in spite of himself. They were two of the most able people he knew. But how could he just…stand here, leaning on the rail of the balcony, sipping his sangria, letting them take charge? What good was he, if he wasn’t in control? What use was he?

He shivered in the cooling night air.

“How would you like to be our sweetheart,” Greg had whispered. “How would you like to sit on my lap, and let us baby you?”

He didn’t know how to be babied. He wasn’t sure he ever had.

Anthea slipped out through the sliding glass doors into the evening air. She smiled at him, slid up, and wrapped her arms around his waist, dropping a kiss on the knuckles of his hand, where he clutched the sangria tightly. “Shhhh, love,” she said, and stroked the small of his back. “We’re home. Relax.”

He shivered harder. “You’re sure you want to do this? It’s not—you don’t have to.”

She clucked softly. “Worry wart.” She cuddled closer. “I’ve never had a nicer invitation.” She drew him close, leaned against him, one arm around his waist. It wasn’t as though she sought him for strength, though—instead he could feel a wild, sweet strength pouring off of her, refreshing him, reassuring him.

“Greg’s starting the fire in the fireplace, and setting up a new music queue,” she said, “then he’ll be out to join us. More sangria?”

He nodded, and let her take the glass from him.

She always took such good care of him, he thought. So did Greg. He’d let them for years—but never like this. He’d never ceded the role of uber-caretaker. All the time previous, as they’d taken care of him, he’d hovered, a vast, adoring power, determined to see to their well-being.

Tonight he’d been told what to do, and tonight he struggled to obey.

Greg came out carrying the sangria pitcher. “Nice choice,” he said, setting it down on the coffee table in the center of the outside living space. Then he dropped easily into the overstuffed outdoors sofa, and patted his lap. “Come here, love.”

Mycroft blinked, and crept, mouse-like, over to the couch. He eased himself delicately into his lover’s lap.

“I’m not too heavy? Too big?”

Lestrade scoffed gently, and shifted, until they both were coiled at ease, Mycroft tucked into the bends of his body with a secure, loving tenderness that always seemed improbable to him. He was too tall, he thought. Too fat—or too bony, depending on how you evaluated his diet-disciplined body.

“Hush,” Greg whispered. “Shhhhhh, sweetheart. You’re ours, tonight.”

Anthea came back out, gave Mycroft a new glass of sangria, and settled beside Greg, pulling Mycroft’s feet into her lap. She eased off his sandals and began a strong, targeted foot-rub, working from his toes up to his instep, kneading his arches, probing his heels, working up his ankles.

Mycroft sighed, seduced by the insane glory of it.

He didn’t know what they’d do that night. Anthea was straight, he knew that. Lestrade bi. Mycroft was gay, but like many gays he could function outside his home range…and the thought of doing so with Greg there turned the thought of making love to Anthea—Anthea making love to him—far more erotic than he’d ever dreamed. Or perhaps he’d watch them make love. That, too, had its appeal.

Greg was cuddling him, caressing his body—nothing improper, and, yet…

The beloved, square palms stroked over his thighs. Lestrade dropped kisses over his face, into the turn of his neck.

Mycroft stirred, tried to give back, only to find his hands held still against his chest.

“Our night, sweetheart…”

“I can’t explore at all?” Mycroft asked, pouting slightly as he considered the ways that could end up crippling the evening.

Greg chuckled softly. “Later. When you’re not just trying to give as good as you get. Right now…”

Mycroft closed his eyes, and clutched the wine between his palms, feeling two sets of hands ease over his body. Hearing two voices murmur softly.

He was half-drugged on the easful tenderness by the time they drew him up off the couch and took him into dinner.

It was like nothing he’d ever experienced. Nothing. He’d never in his memory sat and eaten with such comfort, laughed so easily, felt so safe. Dinner spooled out, slow and lazy, to candlelight and music and good company. Both his lovers touched, traced, kissed him in passing, sucked grapes from his lips, lapped soft cheese from his mouth. It seemed no minute passed without some gentle, worshipful touch or glance. He glowed with it, terrified and on fire with the unfamiliar sense of being adored and cherished.

By the time they led him to his bed, he was shivering with love and fear and need and longing. When they drew the clothes from his body he curled on himself, shy, afraid the enchantment would break and they’d see him as he saw himself—gawky, aging, ginger, balding, speckled like a blood-stained wall at a crime site. Socially inept. Only worthy because he fought to earn his worth by honest effort.

“Hush,” Greg said, stroking his shoulders, kissing the blood-brown freckles as though they were beauty itself.

“Hush,” Anthea said, and tiptoed high, kissing eyes grown damp from the amazement that they loved him.

‘You’re our sweetheart,” they both said. “You’re our darling. Let us take charge…”

They did, and the hours went by in langorous, lecherous love-making. Then, and only then, they let him touch where he would, and taste what he wished—and far too much of the time he couldn’t marshal himself for the effort. Not with Greg behind him, cock firm and tense against the crease of his butt. Not with Anthea leaning over him, tracing his nipples, kissing his mouth. Not with their hands touching everywhere, their mouths sucking and tickling and teasing. They outnumbered him. They were in control. They told him to move here, roll there, and they pleased him—and themselves—and it all became a seamless fantasy, blended of shadows and kindness. They held his orgasm at bay for what seemed eternity—and then, somehow, he was screaming in rapture, trapped between Anthea riding him from in front, and Greg from behind, and both crooning how beautiful he was—how much they loved him.

He cried, then, held between them. They were dry sobs, gasping, whispered, unsure, as he claimed again and again it couldn’t be true. Could not be real.

Their hands told him otherwise. Their bodies swore their loyalty. Their lips kissed and whispered to him.

“Shhh. Sweetheart. Our sweetheart….”

He was the iceman, he thought. He was no one’s sweetheart. Or had not been.

Tonight, though, he was theirs…and he thought, perhaps, he might forever be.


End file.
